Circuits Assembly Online Magazine - CheckSum Combines ICT and Boundary-Scan Test

CheckSum, announced that its combination of in-circuit test and boundary scan delivers test coverage equivalent to traditional "big iron" testers that can cost five times as much.

John VanNewkirk, president and CEO, said, "CheckSum's ICT plus boundary scan solution provides superior alignment between tester resources deployed and the actual fault spectrum of today's complex boards than traditional big-iron testers do."

CheckSum estimates that more than $250 million is wasted annually in North America alone due to the misalignment of big-iron testers with the actual faults found in today's boards. Two basic trends are converging, creating the opportunity for electronics manufacturers to use new, lower-cost approaches that provide a better alignment between test coverage and actual faults than the traditional ICT test methods used over the past two decades.

"First, component technology and the SMT assembly process itself have shifted the fault spectrum of a typical board such that big-iron ICT test capabilities are no longer aligned to it," said VanNewkirk. "For example, ICT vector testing was designed for the straightforward static logic of the devices of the 80s and early 90s. Modern ICs are not testable with conventional ICT 'backdrive' vectors because of access, speed and device complexity issues. As a result, expensive digital vector capability remains idle in virtually every big-iron ICT.

"Second, increasing density of circuit boards is significantly reducing electrical access to boards -- the lifeblood of in-circuit test. To offset loss of access, there's growing and widespread use of boundary scan-equipped devices. For CheckSum, boundary scan is a natural extension of our low-cost design philosophy because it achieves equivalent or better coverage compared to traditional backdrive vectors, but is far more usable for complex chips. Low-cost ICT and boundary scan are naturally complementary, and we believe this is the future of manufacturing test," VanNewkirk continued.

CheckSum, checksum.com